16 The Saint Overboard

pass the time,' he mur­mured deprecatingly.

'Ah, yes—an occasional flutter.' Vogel's eyes, like two beads of impenetrable jet, remained fixed on his face; but the cold lipless smile remained also. 'You can't come to much harm that way. It's the people who play beyond their means who come to grief.'

Simon Templar let a trickle of smoke drift down his nostrils, and that instantaneous instinctive tension within him relaxed into a pervasive chortle of pure glee which spread around his inside like a sip of old brandy. Kurt Vogel, he reflected, must have been taking a diet of the kind of mystery story in which the villain always introduces himself with some lines of sinister innuendo like that—and thereby convinces the perhaps otherwise unsuspecting hero that something villainous is going on. In the same type of story, however, the hero can never resist the temptation to respond in kind—thereby establishing the fact that he is the hero. But the Saint had been treading the fickle tight­ropes of piracy when those same romantic juveniles were cooing in their cradles, and he had his own severely practical ideas of heroism.

'There's not much chance of that,' he said lightly, 'with my overdraft in its present state.'

They sat eye to eye like two duellists baffled for an opening; and the Saint's smile was wholly innocent. If Kurt Vogel had hoped to get him to betray himself by any theatrical insinuations of that sort, there were going to be some disappointed hearts in Dinard that fine day. But Vogel's outward cordiality never wav­ered an iota. He gave away nothing, either—the innuendo was only there if the Saint chose to force it out.

'Are you staying long?'

'I haven't made any plans,' said the Saint nebulously. 'I might dart off at any moment, or I might hang around until they make me a local monument. It just depends on how soon I get tired of the place.'

'It 'doesn't agree with everybody,' Vogel assented purringly. 'In fact, I have heard that some people find it definitely un­healthy.' Simon nodded.

'A bit relaxing, perhaps,' he admitted. 'But I don't mind that. Up to the present, though, I've found it rather dull.'

Vogel sat back and stroked the edge of the table with his finger-tips. If he was disconcerted, the fact never registered on his face. His features were a flat mask of impassively regulated scenery behind that sullen promontory of a nose.

A waiter equilibrating under a dizzy tray of glasses swayed by and snatched their order as he passed. At the same time an ad­joining table became vacant, and another party of thirst-quenchers took possession. The glance of one of them, sweeping round as he wriggled his legs in, passed over the Saint and then became faintly fixed. For a brief second it stayed set; then he leaned sideways to whisper. His companions turned their heads furtively. The name of Yule reached the Saint clearly, but after that the surrounding buzz of conversation and the glutinous strains of the Casino band swallowed up the conversation for a moment. And then, above all interfering undertones, the electric sotto voce of a resplendently peroxided matron in the party stung his eardrums like a saw shearing through tin: 'I'm sure it must be! ... You know, my dear—the bathy-something man. ...'

Simon Templar's ribs lifted under his shirt with the deep breath that he drew into his lungs, and the twirtle of bliss within him rose to a sweet celestial singing. He knew now why the name of Professor Yule had seemed familiar, and why he had tried to place that fresh apple-cheeked face over the trim grey beard. Only a few months ago the newspapers had run their stories and the illustrated weeklies had carried special pictures; the National Geographic Magazine had brought out a Yule Expedition num­ber. For Wesley Yule had done something that no man on earth had ever done before. He had been down five thousand feet into the Pacific Ocean, beyond any depth ever seen before by human eyes—not in any sort of glorified diving bell, but in a fantastic bulbous armour built to withstand the terrific pressure that would have crushed an unprotected man like a midge on a window-pane, in which he was able to move and walk about on the ocean floor nearly a mile below the ship from which he was lowered. He was the man who had perfected and proved a deep-sea costume compared with which the 'iron men' of previous diving experiments were mere amateurish makeshifts, a combina­tion of metallic alloys and scientific construction that promised to revolutionise the exploring of the last secrets of the sea. . . . And now he was in Dinard, the guest of Kurt Vogel, arch hi­jacker of Davy Jones!

That long pregnant breath floated back through the Saint's lips and carried a feather of cigarette-smoke with it—the pause dur­ing which he had held it in his lungs was the only physical index of his emotion. He became aware that the Professor was joining in with some affable common-place, and that Vogel's black eyes were riveted on him unwinkingly. With a perfectly steady hand he tilted the ash off his cigarette, and schooled every scrap of tension out of his face as he turned his head.